my anxious heart

This gallery contains 12 photos.

Originally posted on katie joy crawford:
Spring of 2015 has been busy, trying, amazing and life changing. I have been through so many emotional peaks and valleys and finalizing my senior year has been such a cathartic experience. My Anxious Heart is…

Part 1 – How I learned to drop everything and nap – parenting edition

Having a kid means that life as you previously knew it is over. It’s a new chapter and you must adjust accordingly.

The first thing that gets adjusted is your sleep pattern. Gone are the lazy weekends, the long lie ins, the ability to hit the snooze button for that extra fifteen minutes, and any endings to any dreams you may have wanted to finish (like the one about the cute federal agent who is helping you save the world from zombies and looks great in a tux).

Now before I get into anything, I will gladly state that I am lucky when it comes to the sleeping “through the night” portion of babydom. Now let me explain that sleeping during the night isn’t an 8 hour affair, it’s 4-6 with a 20-30 feeding in between and another 20-30 to get baby back to sleep deeply enough to transfer her back to the crib. Then getting up to turn the coffee maker on for your husband and filling up any bottles that you have (because you ran the dishwasher the night before). If you’re like me, then you also know that just because you put the kid down it doesn’t mean that you’re not going to be awake for another 10-15 minutes making sure that baby doesn’t wake up.

Yes. I’m that neurotic.

I’m not going to complain, I get at least 4-5 hours of sleep at night plus two or three after her dawn feeding.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not tired.

As she gets older, she stays awake more. Besides the basics of feeding and changing, she needs to be played with, taken outside, and taught (or at least the beginnings of teaching things).

So I’ve taken into account what doctors and other moms have told me: Sleep when the baby sleeps.

At first I thought I was going to be supermom. The first week taking care of Kid Cusack by myself, there was no napping for me. I was a little too nervous. The following few weeks I tried to tidy up during the day.

About week five or six I realized my folly. I couldn’t live on three cups of coffee a day and still expect to take care of my kid without wanting to fall on my face.

So, after a month and a half, I would nap when she napped.

The point is. Nap when you can. Especially if you don’t have any help. Otherwise, you’ll struggle to simple things like brush your teeth. Or pee.

Or play with your kid. Or string together a sentence.

I think you get my point.

Nap!

 

 

I’m alive, I swear

And I will be bringing you some more goodies both pop culture, rants and parenting.  Because there just isn’t enough parenting crap out on the web.

BUT

Right now, I’m busy with a 5 month old. So please bear with me.

There will be a Halloween edition coming soon.

How to not be an ass when your friend or loved one has HG (or is chronically ill)

found this here: http://coolhomepages.com/design-ideas-detail.html?id=10526

Being chronically ill is depressing and isolating. You’re out of touch with everyone else, managing your daily needs can be a chore and if you’re illness is severe enough, the very idea of getting up and going to the bathroom can be a feat in and of itself.

I am still part of a support group over on Babycenter.com for people with HG (hyperemesis gravidarium) and many of the women over there don’t have any real life support. Their friends and family don’t know how to deal with them, don’t know anything about this disease or don’t want to, and generally ignore or are passive aggressive towards the ill person.

I’ve experienced some of this and it hurts. A lot. When the people who love you or, who you thought cared about you, don’t seem to want to have anything to do with you when you’re going through a bad time, well it can be damaging.

When I first got sick, I had hope that it would end at four months. Once that didn’t happen and the sickness worsened, I began to get depressed. Between hormones and the feeling that no one understood or cared or that I was somehow being punished, every day was a trial.

I don’t usually ask for help. But I told my friends and family that I was sick and what I had wasn’t just normal morning sickness. It wasn’t going to go away, adjusting my diet wasn’t going to help, and simply putting on a happy face wasn’t going to make me well.

I was lucky, I immediately gathered a support group. Not through anything I asked or wished for but simply because I was immensely lucky to have certain people in my life who cared about me and my health enough to support me through this. My husband is one of them.

It was trying to get certain family members to understand what was going on. I came up against a wall. They either didn’t want to know or didn’t care or in some cases thought I was making a mountain out of a mole hill.

That hurt the most.

Some of the women I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of interacting with have had it much much worse. Their HG, more severe than mine, confined them to their beds and made them slaves to the vomiting and nausea that consumes us all.

No one knows much about HG. It is a disease. It’s a chronic illness with varying level of severeness but with one thing in common. There is no cure. There is a chance of a respite and there is always a chance of a relapse in the worsening of symptoms. I have a mild case. If I get pregnant again, there is a very high percentage stating that I will jump from mild to medium or severe.

It’s hormonal and it’s chemical and that’s only the current theory.

I’ll tell you what it is though. It’s a scary and unbiased beast that will attack and keep you pinned down even while you’re screaming “Uncle”.

It can shutter you in a dark place that exists only in your own mind and create such a siphoning void of exhaustion and despair that depression is the only option.

From weeks 28-39 the HG slammed into me. Vomiting, extreme fatigue, headaches, horrible nausea, dehydration and just general irritability. At around week 31, I started shunning my support group because I began collapsing into myself. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I just wanted to give birth. I just wanted relief. I would’ve done anything. In fact I did. I did accupressure, I walked, I walked some more and did more accupressure. Anything to feel like I was doing something.

I leaned more on my internet group because I didn’t have to talk and they knew, more than anyone, what I was going through. Reading their stories, telling mine, got me choked up a few times.

I was also lucky and had people that educated themselves on what was going on with me. For that I can’t help but be very grateful. However, the truth of the matter is; the only people that will ever know, with 100% clarity, what you’re going through are the ones that have gone through it or are going through it.

This is true for many chronic illnesses. I will never understand what a cancer patient or AIDS goes through because I have never had those illnesses. I can relate to some of their feelings but I can never fully understand.

But you know what, sometimes all a sick person needs is understanding.

From my own experience I can safely say that the people who will stick by you are the ones that will help you up rather than watch you lie there.

But here’s the thing folks, being a caring and thoughtful person costs nothing and if you’re not the caregiver or in the support circle, then NOT being a dick should be easy peasy.

Irregularity

So I’ve had my baby, a beautiful baby girl born on June 8th.

As you can imagine things are a bit hectic round my house so the posts will be every two weeks until she starts sleeping at regular intervals.

30 days left

If my body doesn’t betray me and makes me go over my due date, I have one month left before my daughter arrives.

If I could move right now I would be moving like Carlton.

Happy Mother’s Day

 

So, I’m going to have a kid next month and I thought that it would be a good time to say; Hey Happy Mother’s Day.

This includes everyone. Pregnant women, adoptive moms, foster moms, aunts, big sisters, teachers, grandmas…anyone who has ever been a Mother to a child.

You don’t have to give birth to a kid to be a mom. Remember that. 😀

Two musicians you should be checking out…but you’re not and now I’m sad

 

I don’t know what you’re into. Not personally. I mean, I don’t spy on my followers *slightly nervous laughter* I mean, that’s crazy.

….

However, I’m going to hazard a guess that you’re not listening to the below musicians. And that makes me sad a little.

So here’s a quick list of two to start. You don’t have to love it, you just have to try it. If you try it all then you can have your dessert ;D

I made a mistake. Birthing video trauma

I really did.

My husband was away for a few days for a bachelor party and I was home by myself. The HG is back and I’m on the phone with my mother-in-law. We’re talking about HG support groups. I’m on one over at babycenter and she joined one on Facebook (because she’s awesome), so I’m clicking around on babycenter and lalalala….a video starts. Some innocuous video about giving birth, it was animated and so I wasn’t that grossed out.

I mean, we’ve all seen the Miracle of Life at some point (thank you high school health class).

So, I’m talking and tooling around and I come across Epidural: Live Birth. Now, being the bonehead I am, I assume it’s about giving an epidural. You see, I’m due in about 7 weeks and I know that I want the drugs. I want ALL the drugs.

I’m also not a fan of needles. Or needles near my spine. So I thought, ok. I’ll watch this.

*insert mocking laughter*

Oh my naivete knows no bounds.

The video was actuallyabout a small gray alien trying to come out of a small expandable fleshy keyhole.

I screamed. I wish I had been screaming and yelling because I was trying to make a joke. Alas, that was my first reaction. I do believe the first words were “oh shit. Oh God. Oh Fuck” and a litany of other curses and deity invoking phrases.

There was a baby coming out of a woman’s vagina. That is something that I have to do in 7 weeks!!!!

I felt sick, my mother in law is cracking up and my poor neighbors probably think I’m being murdered.

I’m traumatized.

I’m also sort of annoyed that I didn’t get to see the epidural but had to watch …. that.

Listen. Some people love pregnancy and having babies and feel some sort of Earth Goddess vibe. I don’t.

I’m terrified and scared and omg there’s something that’s about 7 pounds and 20 some odd inches that has to come out of the place where things usually go in. Things that are a lot slimmer and shorter.

Note to any expectant mothers. If you’re like me, skip the birthing videos and just concentrate on the fact that you’ll be getting drugs. Lots of them.

And just lie to yourself about the complete mess that is happening down there and keep thinking, I’ll get a kid out of this. I’ll get my kid.

The world keeps on turning

Oh, it’s been a while my gentle and lovely readers. A lot has been going on the world while I have put myself in semi-confinement.

Being in confinement due to sickness and the unpredictability of said sickness sucks. It puts a damper on your spirits as well. To try and combat that, recently I’ve been reading a lot and becoming addicted to Buzzfeed. Oh, and doing a lot of reserving books at the local library.

However, despite my own issues the world keeps on turning.

North Korea has lost their shit: OOOOO I have a button and I know how to press it

Celebrities are visiting nations that are considered threats to America: Dennis Rodman and his bestie, 99 Problems and a passport issued in the US is apparently not one because they said we could